"Thanks."

Rubbery eggs are better than pork sausage, though she was kind of hoping she could trade with Marcy or another Boston enclaver because small acts of kindness and reciprocity help build goodwill. Not that Annisa's goodwill isn't valuable, but she's already locked down a lot of trust with her. She really wants Marcy to think well of her and every little bit counts.

"I don't know if it's the class I'm most excited for, but sure, looking forward to it."

"Oh, I'm definitely most looking forward to Shop." 

"Lab for me," says Abigail.

"My father would be so disappointed in me if he saw how long I made faces before I moved shop out of Monday morning. I really want to start building stuff." 

"Also shop, though Mediterranean secret societies is a close runner-up. I've requested Arabic for language lab, hoping the school lets me get away with it and I can use that block for other things. Did you get Intro Theory of Artificing?" The question is directed mainly at Marcy.

A girl shows up with a breakfast tray, an Asian boy following her, and absolutely no sense that you can't just walk up to people who are sitting at enclave tables, as long as you already know them. She doesn't sit down, she just casually walks up and starts talking. "Hey Malak. How'd scheduling go, got anything good?"

Fuck fuck fuck those kids have power sharers fuck 

"Very pleased to meet you, Naima, I think she looks busy – " 

Oh NO poor Malak also who the fuck does that??? She doesn't look like one of the confused Americans who doesn't know anything!! Annisa....will rehearse at bedtime graceful ways of handling this situation both as a bystander whose reputation is nonetheless mildly at stake here - Malak's the one who got her the introduction to Marcy - and as the primary victim should, god forbid, it ever happen to her. Right now she's coming up completely empty. She can't say "we're in the middle of something" because if Boston likes to be superficially more polite than that - the Brits do - then she's been too blatant and been rude. Malak's best move is probably to say "yeah, I'll show you later" and hope the girl can TAKE A HINT but if the girl could TAKE A HINT she wouldn't be doing this.

... Oh no.

"Oh. Hi Naima. I think this table is full?" GO AWAY PLEASE "Let's catch up at lunch?"

She is seriously tempted to vanish off the face of the earth forever.

Julian cannot read the enclave kids but that south asian girl looks like she wants them dead. He's not sure if one person can look apologetic and slightly protective but also totally uninvolved all at the same time but he sure is trying his best. 

Huh. Normally, Naima would feel like a table not having more seats isn't a reason not to trade schedules while she's standing here, but Malak additionally seems really stressed about something? Weird. Maybe she's having a really stressful interaction and needs to focus on it, or something? Yeah, that seems like the vibe she's getting here.

"Cool, talk to you then," says Naima, and she walks off looking for a different table.

Probably that was not a deliberate act of sabotage because who hates someone else that much on the first day of school but also can you possibly be that oblivious? Maybe she's...blind, and can only sense life-force and not see power-sharers- she's really stretching, here - 

She would shoot Malak a sympathetic glance but she's working quite hard on maintaining a range of facial expressions that can't plausibly further offend Marcy. She will give Malak a hug later - wait, where did that thought come from, they're not friends - she will give Malak a sympathetic glance later, there.

THANK YOU GOD FOR SHOWING NAIMA SOME SENSE.

" - So that was Naima, she's from Cairo, has a real entrepreneurial spirit and traded away all of her social skills for a strong healing affinity."

(And Julian is gone. He was really expecting his most stressful moment in the Scholomance thus far to involve something with more teeth.) 

When something awkward happens it's often a good strategy to pretend it didn't so that everyone else can join you in a collective delusion if they want. She mentally rewinds the last thirty seconds and says "I didn't get intro theory of artificing, which is too bad, it sounds great. I did get what looks like a start on math-for-artificers alongside algebra 2, though, and the German stuff I wanted, so not a bad pull all told." Maybe Malak will need help with her artificing theory homework and show her all the cool things she does not ill-wish her fellow students that is not proper. She can try again next semester.

Phew, that is a relief. God bless Marcy - God has already blessed Marcy a ton, but, hey, Malak is grateful, God can bless her some more if He feels like it.

"I got a pretty good assortment, only really disappointed in 'Malice and Maleficaria in 18th century French poetry' Monday mornings - more mal studies is fine, but French is my weakest language and I know nothing about European poetry."

Maybe the school noticed Malak had recently acquired a French spellbook, but she can't say that.

"Yeah, if I have a hard time with anything it'll be Akkadian Divinations. I'm hoping we'll get translations of the primary sources; if it's meant for fluent Akkadian speakers only I'm going to be in a hurry."

" - Ooh, Akkadian. My brother - had Akkadian." oops she didn't mean to pause there but she almost said 'has' and - now it's awkward and a little sad. Uh, moving on, "Do you have any other semitic languages or are you coming at it blind?"

"Pretty much blind, I'll probably be spending all my language labs on it either way." Worst case someone else in the class will be better prepared and she can buy tutoring, ideally with different tutoring. "It'll be a good springboard to Aramaic later if I decide to go that route instead of Old English via German."

"Well I'd offer to help if that wouldn't be outrageously stupid on my part, I've got a few semitic languages. Be careful not to get any Sumarian, I hear it's a bitch to learn and all the written corpus uses the Akkadian script."

"Good to know, thanks. It's funny how the scheduling can push you in new directions with languages; I don't think that happens in artificing as much because you get some choice of projects. I guess you can be mostly a metalwork person and end up in fiber classes; that's not too different."

"There's not that many specialized artificing classes, fewer than there are languages. And - I think sometimes the school is trying to be helpful, kind of, but has a lot more things it can target with lit and history? Like if instead of mediterranean secret societies it had given me a class on ninjas I would see where it was coming from even though I've got no Japanese at all. But there's no reason for it to stick a fabric artificer in a stonecutting class apart from being mean."

AAAAAH Annisa's language incompetence is going to interfere with getting in with Boston even though she doesn't have an accent in English and doesn't need any languages, AAAARGH. It takes her a while to think of anything she can say that isn't "I know none of those languages"...

"You can see bits and pieces where it would be being helpful, if the school was as safe as they'd intended it - I got thrown into some Javanese literature that'd be actively fun except for how it'll have ten kids in it and all of them, like me, probably immediately swapped out."

"Man, I bet there's a range of class size where it would be safe enough to be worth it, but because there are too many homerooms to coordinate nobody can be sure they're at that size, so they drop it, and because that always happens it's rational to drop it even though if there were perfect realtime communication between homerooms you could get a quorum. Not to say your thing was that or that you didn't do the rational thing under the circumstances."

"Yeah it seems like - I'd be much more interested in a class on ninjas or Akkadian divinations or - really anything in the vast expanse of human knowledge that's focused a little farther from the Bosphorus - if learning twenty sentences of Japanese or whatever wasn't potentially life-threatening, and being in a small class or doing badly on the homework or not having enough time to work out or make things in shop weren't all life-threatening."